CPA-ESQ.

What a great episode with Veterans Stadium!!

The 700's level section of that "pit" they called Veterans Stadium was where the cheapest of seats were (I think $10 would get you entry and you can pick your seat)... it was wayyyy up on the top of the stadium.

The loyal crowd that inhabited that section was a 'colorful' breed to say the least... so I loved the joke about the bathroom

hal9000

I never thought I'd say this, after growing up with NBC dominating most of my family's TV watching in the 80's and 90's - but 95% of our current "big three" show watching is on ABC.

The Goldberg's is one of the funniest shows currently on TV today.

windom

So the fall of Berlin Wall was nowhere near April 1. Also, this is probably the latest into the '80s they've gone. I'm waiting for them to do an episode covering the first episode of The Simpsons.

Also, Tiffany was pretty much over by 1989. She actually preformed at my high school when I went there. That had to have been around 86-87. She opened for The Jets after my high school won a concert from a radio station. I didn't attend though.

No one would probably still be wearing a Howard the Duck shirt after 1986.

Yes, I know I'm nitpicking...

Fist of Doom

I'm okay with them jumbling up the years (they've been doing that all along), but it does take me out of the show when they go to the very end of the 80s. This show feels like around 1985 and 1989 feels out of place. (I had to look up when the Berlin Wall fell, I thought it was early 90s).

UAIOE

I had a social studies teacher in 6th grade that had a (very small) piece of the Berlin Wall on her desk.

My only nitpick was that the "war" between the brothers would have been stopped dead when he took apart the camcorder. Destroy something that expensive back then? One of the parents would have found out.

Rex Fenestrarum

No kidding. My dad bought a VHS camcorder back in 1983, and the thing cost more than my first car. Murray would have absolutely lost his shit over the camcorder thing.

Like I said many posts ago, the New Kids on the Block episode made my head hurt. NKOTB's first album was released in 1986, but was totally ignored outside the Boston area. The band didn't hit it big until 1988's Hangin' Tough. Yet Erica shows Adam a NKOTB fan video she'd made when she was much younger. Adam says he was too young to remember any of it, despite her room being covered in NKOTB posters. This implies that the video was made sometime between 1979 and 1983... which is before the band existed. I guess I should actually thank the writers for the NKOTB episode, since that was the one that forced me to give up on the timelines and just deal with the show as-is. It still irritates me to see a character talk about "Madonna's new Like a Virgin album" (1984) while wearing a "Bo Knows" shirt (1989). Eh... what you gonna do?

Having said all that, I wonder how many girls back in the 80s were fans of The Cure and Tiffany at the same time. People actually wore t-shirts 'cos they liked the band back then... not like today where people buy Ramones shirts at Urban Outfitters 'cos it "looks cool". You wouldn't have caught me or my best friend in a Tiffany shirt in the 80s, even as a joke, or if it came free in the mail with samples of Tide. And back then, people in Tiffany shirts would have made fun of people in Cure shirts, and vice versa.

I see what you did there.

Paff

This show is growing on me. It's not a series record on the DVR, but it may soon be. I like how Adam is taking actual events from his childhood, and proving it with video/photographic evidence at the end of the episode. Like, that dorky photo was actually real!

mphtrilogy

I absolutely loved that picture reveal by the real adam, that is great stuff….

dek

You do know that Erica is a fictional character, right?

"Is the sister on the show, Erica Goldberg (Hayley Orrantia), based on a real person?

Yes, but in real life, Erica is actually Eric, Adam Goldberg's oldest brother. The Goldbergs true story reveals that he did not have any sisters. "I saw more stories coming out of having a daughter in the mix," Goldberg reasons. "I really took all of Eric's characteristics" and sculpted them onto a teenage girl's personality. What does Adam's real-life brother think of this gender change? "He was disappointed at first, but he has complete deniability of his character now."

also

Why is The Goldbergs set in "1980-something" instead of a specific year?

At the beginning of nearly every episode of The Goldbergs, the TV show's narrator (Patton Oswalt) reminds us that the current episode takes place in "1980-something." As Vulture.com points out in their interview with the real Adam Goldberg, this ambiguity with regard to time finds the characters discussing Poltergeist, released in 1982, at the same time the brother, Barry (Troy Gentile), is super-excited about the Reebok Pump, which was invented in the late-eighties. The main reason for the mildly confusing (though often easy to overlook) issue with the show's time frame is that if the show was set in a specific year, like 1985 for example, the creators would have to wait up to five years (five seasons) to include references to certain '80s staples like Say Anything (1989), the Reebok Pump and the Nintendo Power Glove.

"I should be so lucky to be five years in on a show," says the real Adam Goldberg. "And for now I only have twelve episodes. He added that for most of us, when we recall our memories of the 1980s, we usually don't remember the exact year anyway. "When I think, When did I win Legend of Zelda? I don't remember what year it was. I only remember that it was somewhere in the mid to late eighties. ... So we decided to set it in '1980-something.'" This idea of having an undependable narrator was "so liberating creatively. We could do anything ... It's kind of a melting pot of the eighties. It's how you remember it."

Rex Fenestrarum

I didn't know it as absolute fact, but they've shown pictures of the real family many times and there was never a daughter, so... And the point wasn't whether Erica existed in real life. Her character couldn't possibly done what happened in the episode: been a NKOTB fan years before the band actually existed. That's why I said:

I never thought the show was a documentary, but as someone who grew up then, it annoyed me (at first) to see a dozen anachronisms on every episode. After the NKOTB episode, I just gave up and decided to enjoy the show as it is. Kind of like how Banshee used to bother me: no one googled Sheriff Hood before he showed up? How was Job able to create a fake online persona for Hood when Hood had been in prison for 15 years? How can this small Pennsylvania town have a murder rate higher than Bogota and not be national news? But I finally just decided that it was "a comic book come to life", and it's been all good ever since.

windom

Also, would a camcorder manual actually have the directions showing how to reassemble it after having taken it apart completely? I'm pretty sure it would have just been an operating manual. I don't think manufacturers would ever expect an average consumer to disassemble then reassemble one of their camcorders. Or maybe Barry just assumed the manual would include those instructions.

dek

And again, as I said:

this ambiguity with regard to time finds the characters discussing Poltergeist, released in 1982, at the same time the brother, Barry (Troy Gentile), is super-excited about the Reebok Pump, which was invented in the late-eighties. The main reason for the mildly confusing (though often easy to overlook) issue with the show's time frame is that if the show was set in a specific year, like 1985 for example, the creators would have to wait up to five years (five seasons) to include references to certain '80s staples like Say Anything (1989), the Reebok Pump and the Nintendo Power Glove.

"I should be so lucky to be five years in on a show," says the real Adam Goldberg. "And for now I only have twelve episodes. He added that for most of us, when we recall our memories of the 1980s, we usually don't remember the exact year anyway. "When I think, When did I win Legend of Zelda? I don't remember what year it was. I only remember that it was somewhere in the mid to late eighties. ... So we decided to set it in '1980-something.'" This idea of having an undependable narrator was "so liberating creatively. We could do anything ... It's kind of a melting pot of the eighties. It's how you remember it."

Seems to be a common theme amongst people who watch the show and can't get over the non-linear narrative. If I did that, it would take my enjoyment out of the show.

RE: Camcorder Manual - I usually watch the show twice to see any easter eggs or gems I missed out on the first time so I paused it when the manual came on. It was just a manual but by Barry's twisted logic, it was the instructions on how to re-assemble it.



<iframe width="1280" height="720" src="http://abc.go.com/embed/VDKA0_cag69mpl" frameborder="0"></iframe>

Rex Fenestrarum

Jesus, dek I GET IT ALREADY. That's precisely why I said "I guess I should actually thank the writers for the NKOTB episode, since that was the one that forced me to give up on the timelines and just deal with the show as-is".

whotony

Yeh and can you delete or spoiler those giant pics.

windom

It would have been cool to actually catch Barry Goldberg on The Middle when I watched it...unfortunately, I must have been paying closer attention to my laptop than to my TV.

CPA-ESQ.

I caught him at the party Sue went to.. that was kind of cool.

windom

Getting your first CD player in 1989 (UHF release year)? Seems a little late to me. Also $900? I guess it was actually a whole stereo system they bought. I paid $300 for my Sony component CD player in 1985. Did Sam Goody ever actually sell equipment like what they bough? I guess buying at Sam Goody might explain the high price though.

whotony

T shirt with Al on it doesn't mean it's 1989.

JimRochester

I worked in a local stereo shop in 81/82 and we sold them. If memory serves they were $600 plus which was big money in 1981.

windom

It was a UHF shirt. Did they sell those before 1989?

Paff

The guys above argued it ad nauseum, but you really have to get over trying to pinpoint a specific year that any of this takes place and just look at it as 80s pop culture in general.

RichC2

It's 80s and very early 90s, its anachoristic nature hasn't bothered me yet. It plays like somebody telling a story before somebody stopped them and said "No no, that happened before, blah blah hadn't been released yet." "Oh yeah, that's right."

Paff

Many of us notice the anachronisms (though again, we have to ignore them), because we lived through the era. Thus, we know exactly when CDs were introduced, when Ferris Bueller came out, etc. As more and more time passes, this will be a non-issue.

I thought that was brilliantly covered in Futurama. The group goes back to Roswell NM 1947, and choose "early 20th century clothes", resulting in this:



Professor Farnsworth is wearing 20s style, hopelessly out of date, and Leela is wearing 50s styles that haven't even been introduced yet.

windom

Well, I thought the fall of the Berlin Wall was the latest into '80s they'd go, but they went later now. America's Funniest Home videos "Originally airing as a special on November 26, 1989, it debuted as a regular weekly series on January 14, 1990."

So since they watched two distinct episodes of AFV, the show has stepped into the '90s now.

Of course the Reagan-Mondale election was in 1984.

UAIOE

I'm not gonna lie, 1989 & 1990 kind of blur together in my memory. So I understand this whole "1980 whatever" business.